Sam Adams News Out of GABF – New Beer and LongShot Winners!

There are a couple fun announcements to come out of Sam Adams from GABF this year, and I was pretty excited to share them with you folks after they dropped in my inbox this afternoon.

First up – a new beer!

Sam ’76

This beer is a pretty unique one. The brewery experimented with both lager and yeast strains to come up with the concept for this new brew. The brewery took two active fermentations and blended them together to create what they are calling a “deliciously harmonious result”.

The press release says that the process delivers a distinct flavor that showcases the slight fruitiness of an ale with the balanced drinkability and smoothness of a lager.

At 4.7% ABV this beer is perfect for any sessionable occasions you might find yourself in, and they say that it will surprise any craft beer lover with its huge flavor and aroma along with a light bodied, refreshing crispness.

The hopped this beer with a combination of:

Cascade

Citra

Mosaic

Simcoe

Galaxy

Which should give the beer a tropical citrus aroma that gives way to a bright, juicy citrus hop flavor but without the hop bitterness.

After testing and experimenting for over a year, testing over 60 iterations with multiple hop combinations in the nano brewery in Boston, this recipe is set to hit stores finally in early 2018.

The Longshot Winners

As if a new beer announcement wasn’t enough, Sam Adams also took the opportunity to announce this years winners of their LongShot homebrew competition too.

The competition was created 21 years ago to recognize passionate homebrewers, and the LongShot competition now equips winners with the experience and education to further their love of brewing and potentially become a brewing professional like multiple past LongShot winners. Contest applicants submitted two-minute videos explaining their passion for brewing and why they want to leave their day job to become a professional brewer. A panel of judges narrowed the video applicants down to the top 10, who were then narrowed down to the top 5 by online drinking votes. The top 5 homebrewers then submitted their best homebrew for judging by a panel of expert media judges and Samuel Adams brewers including Jim Koch.

Ronnie Lawson

Ronnie, a homebrewer from Austin TX who brewed a cross between a Munich Helles and Dortmunder beer, won the overall LongShot American Homebrew Contest and will be awarded the new LongShot grand prize: a one-week “Brewership.” The Brewership is a fully-immersive brewing experience at the Samuel Adams Boston Brewery that allows Lawson to work alongside the award-winning team of Samuel Adams brewers, learning about ingredient sourcing, the nuts and bolts needed to run a brewery, quality assurance testing, packaging and more. The Brewership also includes the chance to brew a limited-release collaboration beer that will be available in Lawson’s hometown as well as the Samuel Adams Boston Brewery.

“Becoming a professional brewer will be a dream come true. To better prepare myself for this day, I continue to read everything that I can get my hands on about brewing as well as beer styles. Everything that I have done with my brewing and all of the competitions that I have entered all point to one direction: becoming a professional brewer. What I first thought would just be a fun hobby has turned into a passion that has felt serendipitous in the outcome so far. Winning LongShot adds another locomotive engine to what feels like an unstoppable train!”

The two runners-up, Peter Malikowski of Hampden, ME and Justin Greer of Royal Oak, MD, both of whom brewed outstanding and different New England IPAs, will receive a scholarship for an online brewing course at The Siebel Institute of Technology, an internationally-inspired educational experience in brewing technology knowledge.

The Samuel Adams Brewing & Business Experienceship

The Brewing & Business Experienceship is a core element of the Brewing the American Dream program that helps up-and-coming brewers who have participated in BTAD to advance their brewing dreams. This year, Timothy and Dali Parker from Chula Vista Brewery in Chula Vista, CA were named the winners of the 2018 Brewing & Business Experienceship.

Veteran and minority-owned, Chula Vista Brewery has been on a mission to bring quality beer to an underserved community in the San Diego area. The brewery received a microloan through program non-profit lending partner Accion in 2015 to obtain the equipment needed to open the brewery. Chula Vista’s current distribution is limited to its 12-tap tasting room and local craft beer events, and the Parkers have dreams of reaching even more craft beer lovers.

“It’s an unbelievable honor to win the Experienceship. We want to brew great beers for our community, neighbors and friends for many years to come. Now, with the team from Sam Adams behind us, we’re confident they’ll steer us in the right direction and help us advance our mission at Chula Vista Brewery.” – Tim Parker

The Experienceship will be tailored to Chula Vista Brewery’s specific business needs with opportunities that include extended mentoring, a trip to the Boston Brewery to learn from brewing and business experts, the opportunity to brew a collaboration beer with Samuel Adams and financial support to attend industry events like GABF.

If you remember, recently Sam Adams released a fantastic variety pack that I did a write-up about, where they collaborated with five breweries on the Brewing the American Dream Collaboration Pack. A majority of the up-and-coming breweries in the pack had previously won the Brewing & Business Experienceship.

About Samuel Adams Brewing the American Dream

Jim Koch started Samuel Adams in his kitchen in 1984 when imported and domestic beer were the only option for beer lovers. In his pursuit of a better beer, he ignited a similar revolution, the craft beer movement, inspiring a whole new category that’s produced millions of jobs in communities from coast-to-coast. In the wake of his success, and with a passion for supporting entrepreneurs who are in the place where he once found himself, Jim launched Brewing the American Dream – a philanthropic program that embodies Sam Adams’ pursuit of better.

In partnership with Accion, the nation’s largest non-profit microlender, Brewing the American Dream provides startups in food and beverage with real-world business advice and financing through Speed Coaching, Pitch Room Competitions, loans, mentoring and more. Since 2008, Brewing the American Dream has provided thousands of small businesses with mentoring and loans totaling millions of dollars, which have helped create or retain thousands of jobs across the country. Additionally, Sam Adams has provided loans to over 40 breweries totaling more than $1 Million, as well as coaching to hundreds of brewers across the country.

The Boston Beer Company began in 1984 with a generations-old family recipe that Founder and Brewer Jim Koch uncovered in his father's attic. Inspired and unafraid to challenge conventional thinking about beer, Jim brought the recipe to life in his kitchen. Pleased with the results of his work, Jim decided to sample his beer with bars in Boston in the hopes that drinkers would appreciate the complex, full-flavored beer he brewed fresh in America. That beer was aptly named Samuel Adams Boston Lager, in recognition of one of our nation's great founding fathers, a man of independent mind and spirit. Little did Jim know at the time, Samuel Adams Boston Lager would soon become a catalyst of the American craft beer revolution.

Today, The Boston Beer Company brews more than 60 styles of beer. It relentlessly pursues the development of new styles and the perfection of classic beers by searching the world for the finest ingredients. Using the traditional four vessel brewing process, the Company often takes extra steps like dry-hopping, barrel-aging and a secondary fermentation known as krausening. The Company has also pioneered another revolution, the “extreme beer” movement, where it seeks to challenge drinker's perceptions of what beer can be. The Boston Beer Company has been committed to elevating the image of American craft beer by entering festivals and competitions around the globe, and is one of world's most awarded breweries at international beer competitions. As an independent company, brewing quality beer remains its primary focus. Although Samuel Adams beer is America's leading craft beer, it accounts for only one percent of the U.S. beer market. The Boston Beer Company will continue its independently-minded quest to brew great beer and to advocate for the growth of craft beer across America.